Alice Chambers |
Productivity stands as a key determinant of business success and efficiency. But employees are unable to work productively without access to information and time management tools, says Geoff Webb, vice president of solution strategy at human capital management software company isolved.
“Many employees are unable to self-serve when they have questions about their work,” he says. “This leads to them asking HR teams for support which in turn hinders their productivity.”
Approximately 40 per cent of HR teams spend half to all of their days answering the same set of questions repeatedly, according to isolved’s third annual HR leaders report. Not only does this reduce the amount of time they have to dedicate to their primary tasks, but it also means they are slower to answer employee questions, impacting their work too. isolved’s People Cloud aims to connect employees with their businesses so they have instant access to all the information they need. Delivered on Microsoft Azure, People Cloud connects every point of an employee’s day from payroll to scheduling their time.
“There are three ways in which artificial intelligence helps to enhance employee experience, starting with helping them to get the basics right,” says Webb. “First, it automates backend workflows for processes such as alerting employees to payroll adjustments. Generally, people are unhappy when they are paid the wrong amount, so using AI for essential processes like this makes a big difference to business operations and employee engagement. A busy HR or payroll professional might miss the occasional thing, but AI and machine learning adds another level of analysis so that employees don’t miss when these instances occur.”
Secondly, AI improves employee experience through personalisation.
“Employees wanting to be promoted can use AI to help them by targeting training courses to expand their skills,” says Webb. “Or it can help to improve the recruitment process by reviewing candidate resumes and analysing their ability to meet job requirements. AI can also go beyond that by matching internal employees to positions that open up in the organisation, helping them to progress their careers within the company.
“AI also tracks individual working patterns and shares that information with team leaders to inform them when an employee is going above and beyond,” adds Webb. “Having all this information in one place is incredibly useful for employers so they can monitor workloads and better reward their teams.”
Finally, Webb suggests that the third way AI improves employee experience is by facilitating interactions through chatbots. isolved delivers a conversational virtual assistant within its People Cloud platform that is accessible through Microsoft Teams and connects to backend systems, reducing HR workloads through machine learning and natural language processing. Users can find answers to frequently asked questions such as “what are my benefits?” and “how much time off do I have left?”
“This removes the constant drizzle of questions that HR teams are repeatedly answering each day and puts employees in control of their own time by empowering them to find the answers they need straightaway,” says Webb.
While AI has been filtering into business processes for some time now, it’s something that HR teams are wanting to benefit more from.
“We tend to hear a lot of concern about how AI is taking jobs but it’s more about helping people to be more efficient and productive,” says Webb. “It can help to progress the workforce and that gets lost in a lot of the headlines. There is a lot of appetite for the good that AI can deliver to businesses and employees, and that is something we should all be building on.”
This article was originally published in the Autumn 2023 issue of Technology Record. To get future issues delivered directly to your inbox, sign up for a free subscription